dcaufandomcom-20200222-history
Mister Freeze
'''Dr. Victor Fries '''was a scientist who specialized in cryogenics, and through tragic circumstances, became the supervillain known as '''Mr. Freeze'. History Tragic Accident Victor Fries was one of GothCorp's most brilliant scientists and cryogenic researchers. When his wife, Nora Fries became infected with a deadly disease, he developed a special freezing cell and planned to cryogenically hold her until a cure was found. However, Fries had been misappropriating GothCorp's money, which left the company in debt and the experiment unauthorized. When he was interrupted by GothCorp CEO, Ferris Boyle, a fight ensued and Fries grabbed a handgun, and pointed it at Boyle and his security guards. Fries was then calmly ordered to drop the gun. The reasoning that it was not his nature to resort to violence and that a possibility may have existed for him to legitimately bankroll Nora's experiment. When Boyle's smooth talk got to Fries as he relaxed and let down his guard, the deceitful CEO kicked the scientist into a lab table full of beakers which exploded. The resulting explosion smashed Fries into his cryogenic freezing tanks and the accident soaked his entire body with the freezing solution and rendered him unable to survive outside of a sub-zero environment. After he vowed revenge on those who had wronged him, Dr. Victor Fries became known as "Mr. Freeze" and created a vacuum tight suit which maintained his body temperature at 50 degrees below zero and tripled his strength as well as built a laser-powered cold gun. Revenge Driven by hatred over the destruction of his life and maddened by his condition, Mr. Freeze sought revenge on Ferris Boyle. He first attacked GothCorp, although his plan was stopped by Batman who managed to capture one of Freeze's underlings. Freeze intended to kill Boyle in revenge at a party where the GothCorp CEO was due to earn the "Gotham Humanitarian of the Year" Award, but Batman foiled it on account of Freeze putting innocent civilians in danger in his quest for vengeance. Freeze managed to trap Boyle in ice that was caked up to his waist when Batman tackled him and the fight ensued. However, Batman had defeated Freeze by using a thermos of chicken soup at the spur of the moment to crack Freeze's helmet, thus raising his body temperature and rendered him unconscious. Batman handed over the video security footage to the Gotham Police, which presented evidence that led to Boyle's arrest for his misdeeds. Freeze was also arrested and placed into a sub-zero holding cell in Arkham Asylum. Unsuited, Freeze wore a prison uniform and was holding a snow globe of a ballerina which resembled his wife and cried to himself that he failed to save her, but hoped that she was living peacefully in Heaven, where they may be together again. Further Harassment Sometime later, entrepreneur and businessman, Grant Walker discovered Nora Fries's frozen (but living) body and used her as a bargaining chip to gain what Mr. Freeze had always seen as a curse: immortality. Freeze transformed Walker's cell structure to a frozen prison that was similar to his own. Upon completion, Freeze betrayed Walker and destroyed the "Utopian" society that he'd been building. Freeze then secluded himself in a self-made ice block, floating in colder waters until he finally settled in the Arctic. He stayed there with Nora, and continued to look for a cure. During his stay, Freeze met an orphaned boy named Koonak, took him in as a surrogate son, adopted two polar bears, Notchka and Shaka, as loyal pets, and formed a sort of family. Saving His Wife .]] Unfortunately, an exploration crew inadvertently crashed into Mr. Freeze's home. Nora's containment cell was destroyed and her deadly disease progressed into its fatal stages. After he froze the entire crew of the sub, Freeze headed to Gotham City with Nora, Koonak, and his polar bears to enlist the aid of head cryogenic researcher Gregory Belson, while he hid out at an abandoned oil rig that was five miles offshore. Though he was hesitant, Belson was eventually bribed to aid Freeze. Together they found a way to cure Nora's disease, but it required an organ transplant. With no deceased donors available, they were forced to pursue a live one. Belson initially refused, but relented when Freeze promised him large quantities of gold that would solve his financial troubles. The "donor" they chose was Barbara Gordon and they proceeded to kidnap her. However, Batman and Robin managed to interrupt the operation before it took place. The battle that ensued caused the oil rig to explode. Batman, Robin, and Barbara were able to evacuate Nora and Koonak in time, but Freeze had fallen into the fiery blast and was assumed dead, but survived and returned to the Arctic with his polar bears. Sometime later, Freeze watched a news report through a window and heard that his wife had been successfully revived by an operation that was funded by Wayne Enterprises, and he himself had been posthumously credited with having kept Nora alive long enough for the operation to take place. He shed a tear in happiness and wandered off into the Arctic with his two polar bears. Withering away , "Cold Comfort"}} In Gotham City, Nora waited patiently for her husband to return, but received no form of contact from him. Victor was ashamed of his illness and could not bear to return to his beloved when he could not touch her. Unbeknownst to anyone, the effects of the accident that had made him "immortal" caused his body to deteriorate. By the time Freeze was able to kidnap doctors to halt the deterioration's progress, only his head remained intact. Freeze used robotic spider-like legs that werer attached to his head's capsule to maneuver around and a larger robotic body when he needed to walk further. Resigned that he would never again be united with his beloved wife, a new layer of ice froze over his heart. Having lost that which was most precious to him, Freeze resolved to stamp out warmth wherever it glowed. With a newer, more powerful robot body and a chillingly sardonic personality, Freeze lost his obsession over his wife and instead concentrated on bringing misery to the people of Gotham and its protector, Batman. With a group of "Ice Maidens" who were armed with ice guns that were based on his own designs, Freeze launched a series of attacks on Gotham City, sought out that which renowned individuals valued most, and destroyed them. Despite a few encounters with Batman, Freeze succeeded in ruining many dreams, brought terror to Gotham, attacked Wayne Manor, and froze Alfred Pennyworth. That, however, was only a prelude to Freeze's ultimate blow against the Caped Crusader: using a "reverse fusion bomb", he hoped to leave all of Gotham frozen solid, and thereby destroy Batman's hope. Fortunately for Gotham, Batman and Batgirl stopped the plan, with the former flying Freeze's bomber plane over the ocean before he dropped the bomb with its maker attached to it. The blast created an enormous pillar of ice in the water, with Freeze's suit trapped within. However, the icy villain had managed to escape. Redemption For forty years, Victor Fries' disembodied head remained in storage at Wayne-Powers until Derek Powers and Dr. Stephanie Lake transferred his consciousness to a new clone body that was built from his baseline DNA. This was intended as a test of a plan to attempt a similar process for Powers, as Powers and Fries both had systemically damaged DNA as a result of past exposure to unique compounds. At first, the process seemed to work for Fries. It was implied that Victor and Stephanie Lake were in the beginnings of a romantic relationship when the pair visited the cemetery where Victor's original head was interred. While Victor and Lake visited the burial for his original body's disease-ridden head, an assassin attempted to kill him out of vengeance for his own murdered family that Mr. Freeze had killed years ago, but was thwarted by the new Batman. Much to Batman's surprise, Fries let the assassin go and promised to show that he was a changed man. To that end, Fries used an interview to announce that he had established a Foundation to make amends to Gotham City. After that interview, Victor's cloned body started showing signs of reverting to his original body's previous low-temperature state. As a result, Powers and Lake opted to terminate the experiment with Stephanie coldly turning up the temperature drastically in Fries's sealed cubicle. After he realized what was happening, Fries used the gurney that he was sitting on to break the glass partition that sealed the cubicle off and escaped. Soon after this, Fries returned to the Wayne-Powers medical complex and used a suit that he had in "cold storage". Mr. Freeze returned to exact revenge on both Powers and Lake, as well as destroy the compound so he could commit suicide. During the assault, Freeze was confronted by the new Dark Knight. That was interrupted when Blight attacked and badly injured Freeze. Freeze recovered in time to save Batman from Blight, and blasted him out of the compound just as he was about to land the finishing blow. Freeze's last act was to delay the compound's collapse long enough for Batman to escape the destruction while he remained at its heart and was assumed dead when the building exploded. Powers and Abilities As a result of the accident, Mr. Freeze's normal body temperature left him able to withstand levels of cold that were ordinarily fatal to other humans. The reverse of that was an extreme vulnerability to heat to the point where he could not survive outside of a subzero environment. Another side effect of Freeze's condition was that his body's natural aging process slowed completely. Freeze maintained his body's temperature with a cybernetic environmental suit that also tripled his strength to superhuman levels and was heavily armored. Freeze's signature weapon was his freeze gun, a ray gun that could create ice from airborne water vapor or any nearby water source. Both the suit and gun were of Freeze's own invention and he developed several other pieces of technology that made him extremely dangerous. Revamp Much like the other characters of , Mr. Freeze underwent a Stylistic Change when the show transferred to . His changes were subtle, and the character's story was augmented with the introduction of his deteriorated body. Background Information * Mr. Freeze had been a rather poorly received, clownish "villain" from the old live action Batman television series and the DC Comics of the 1960s. This continued on into an earlier animated series produced by Filmation, in which Mr. Freeze was an extraterrestrial villian who would use "freeze" puns, such as demanding ransom or he would freeze Gotham. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm re-imagined the entire history and motivation of Mr. Freeze to produce a villain that could be taken as both a believable character and a deadly, serious threat. The creative team invented the character of the terminally ill Nora Fries to flesh out the backstory of a fully-realized tragic villain. It was the first complete overhaul of a pre-existing character in the DCAU, and to this day it was arguably the most successful. * The DCAU backstory on Mr. Freeze became so popular that it was used as the backstory in the Joel Shumacher Film, Batman & Robin (with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze) as well as the comics. However, the Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin was much more campy, as he used anything with the word "freeze", "ice", or "cool" in just about every sentence, had Nora hidden in an ice cream shop and many more campy subjects, part of what made the film a critical disaster. * Mr. Freeze's overall backstory was often cited among fans as one of the most humane and sad episodes of . * Mr. Freeze's original character design for the series was done by comic book artist Mike Mignola (later of Hellboy fame). Interestingly, Freeze bore a marked resemblance to other Mignola characters, most notably mad Nazi scientist, Herman von Klempt whose disembodied head was kept in a glass tank and was attached to a robotic body. There was also a similarity with Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head. * The character's history in DC comics was likewise retconned in keeping with the DCAU version. In the revamped comics, Victor Fries first developed an interest in science as a child, and froze insects and small animals in water to preserve them. Interestingly, that childlike obsession was shared by Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (another of Mignola's characters) who experimented with cryonics and ways of re-animating the dead from an early age. * Mr. Freeze's appearance in was originally supposed to be a cameo. When Bruce Wayne told Terry McGinnis to go to the fridge to get him a drink, he did so and found Freeze's head staring right back at him when he opened the fridge. However, the producers felt that the character deserved more than that to do his character justice which resulted in the episode: "Meltdown". * In the comic Batman: Gotham Adventures, Mr. Freeze was suspected of killing Ferris Boyle as well as Grant Walker. However, it turned out to be a robotic duplicate that was developed by Nora Fries' new husband, Francis D'Anjou, who was frustrated that Nora still had affections for Victor Fries, whom he viewed as being a monster. By framing Freeze, D'Anjou tried to prove that he was completely irredeemable. At the end, Freeze was seemingly killed in a fight with the robot, Nora divorced, left Francis, and looked for her husband. * Interestingly enough, Mr. Freeze made a single appearance in each Batman series of the DC Animated Universe ( , Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, and ) and was only mentioned beyond that ( , and ). * According to Martin Pasko, Leonard Nimoy was initially approached to play Mr. Freeze, but declined. See Also * DCAU influences on mainstream comics Appearances * "Heart of Ice" * "The Worry Men" * "Deep Freeze" Feature film * Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero * "Cold Comfort" * "Gotham in Pink" * "Hear Me Roar" * "A Cat in the Hand" * "Cold Hands, Cold Heart" * "Meltdown" * "Disappearing Inque" * "The Last Resort" Feature Film * Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker * "Epilogue" Other * Batman: Vengeance * Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu Footnotes Category:A to Z Category:Batman Beyond rogues Category:Batman rogues Category:Future individuals Category:Metahumans Fries, Victor Category:Individuals with above average intelligence Category:Individuals with artificial super strength Category:Arkham Asylum inmates